Toby Johnson, L.P.T.




Contact Us


Table of Contents


Search Site


home  Home


Google listing of all pages on this website


Site Map


Toby Johnson's Facebook page


Toby Johnson's YouTube channel


Toby Johnson on Wikipedia


Toby Johnson Amazon Author Page

Secure Site Comodo Seal

Secure site at

https://tobyjohnson.com



rainbow line

Also on this website:

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.



Toby Johnson's books:

Toby's books are available as ebooks from smashwords.com, the Apple iBookstore, etc.


Finding Your Own True Myth - The Myth of the Great Secret III

FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III


Gay Spirituality

GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness


Gay Perspective


GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe


Secret Matter


SECRET MATTER, a sci-fi novel with wonderful "aliens" with an Afterword by Mark Jordan


Getting Life

GETTING LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE:  A Fantastical Gay Romance set in two different time periods


The Fourth Quill

THE FOURTH QUILL, a novel about attitudinal healing and the problem of evil




Two Spirits
TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams



charmed lives
CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: GaySpirit in Storytelling, a collaboration with Steve Berman and some 30 other writers


Myth of the Great Secret


THE MYTH OF THE GREAT SECRET: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell



In Search of God


IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD: A Mystical Journey



Unpublished manuscripts


About ordering


Books on Gay Spirituality:

White Crane Gay Spirituality Series


rainbow line

  Toby has done five podcasts with Harry Faddis for The Quest of Life

rainbow line

  Articles and Excerpts:

Review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness


Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco"


About Liberty Books, the Lesbian/Gay Bookstore for Austin, 1986-1996


The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate


A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality


Why gay people should NOT Marry


The Scriptural Basis for Same Sex Marriage


Toby and Kip Get Married


Wedding Cake Liberation


Gay Marriage in Texas


What's ironic



Shame on the American People


The "highest form of love"


rainbow line


Gay Consciousness


Why homosexuality is a sin


The cause of homosexuality


The origins of homophobia


Q&A about Jungian ideas in gay consciousness


What is homosexuality?


What is Gay Spirituality?


My three messages


What Jesus said about Gay Rights


Queering religion


Common Experiences Unique to Gay Men


Is there a "uniquely gay perspective"?


The purpose of homosexuality


Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality


What the Bible Says about Homosexuality


Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men



Varieties of Gay Spirituality


Waves of Gay Liberation Activity


The Gay Succession


Wouldn’t You Like to Be Uranian?


The Reincarnation of Edward Carpenter


Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium


Easton Mountain Retreat Center


Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism


The Mysticism of Andrew Harvey


The upsidedown book on MSNBC


rainbow line


Enlightenment


"It's Always About You"



The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara


Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara


You're Not A Wave



Joseph Campbell Talks about Aging



What is Enlightenment?



What is reincarnation?



How many lifetimes in an ego?



Emptiness & Religious Ideas



Experiencing experiencing experiencing



Going into the Light



Meditations for a Funeral



Meditation Practice



The way to get to heaven



Buddha's father was right



What Anatman means



Advice to Travelers to India & Nepal



The Danda Nata & goddess Kalika



Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva



John Boswell was Immanuel Kant



Cutting edge realization



The Myth of the Wanderer



Change: Source of Suffering & of Bliss



World Navel



What the Vows Really Mean



Manifesting from the Subtle Realms



The Three-layer Cake & the Multiverse


The est Training and Personal Intention



Effective Dreaming in Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven


rainbow line

Gay Spirituality


Curious Bodies


What Toby Johnson Believes


The Joseph Campbell Connection


The Mann Ranch (& Rich Gabrielson)


Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy


The Two Loves


The Nature of Religion


What's true about Religion


Being Gay is a Blessing


Drawing Long Straws


Freedom of Religion


rainbow line


The Gay Agenda


Gay Saintliness


Gay Spiritual Functions



The subtle workings of the spirit in gay men's lives.


The Sinfulness of Homosexuality


Proposal for a study of gay nondualism


Priestly Sexuality


Having a Church to Leave


Harold Cole on Beauty


rainbow line


Marian Doctrines: Immaculate Conception & Assumption


Not lashed to the prayer-post


Monastic or Chaste Homosexuality


Is It Time to Grow Up? Confronting the Aging Process


Notes on Licking  (July, 1984)


Redeem Orlando


Gay Consciousness changing the world by Shokti LoveStar


Alexander Renault interviews Toby Johnson



rainbow line


Mystical Vision


"The Evolution of Gay Identity"


"St. John of the Cross & the Dark Night of the Soul."


Avalokiteshvara at the Baths


 Eckhart's Eye


Let Me Tell You a Secret


Religious Articulations of the Secret


The Collective Unconscious


Driving as Spiritual Practice


Meditation


Historicity as Myth


Pilgrimage


No Stealing


Next Step in Evolution


The New Myth


The Moulting of the Holy Ghost


Gaia is a Bodhisattva


rainbow line


The Hero's Journey


The Hero's Journey as archetype -- GSV 2016


The  Gay Hero Journey (shortened)


You're On Your Own


Superheroes


rainbow line


Seeing Differently


Teenage Prostitution and the Nature of Evil


Allah Hu: "God is present here"


 
Adam and Steve


The Life is in the Blood



Gay retirement and the "freelance monastery"


Seeing with Different Eyes


Facing the Edge: AIDS as an occasion for spiritual wisdom


What are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel?


rainbow line


The Vision


The mystical experience at the Servites'  Castle in Riverside


A  Most Remarkable Synchronicity in Riverside


The Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis


rainbow line

The Techniques Of The World Saviors

Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby


Part 2: The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara


Part 3: Jesus and the Resurrection


Part 4: A Course in Miracles


rainbow line


The Secret of the Clear Light


Understanding the Clear Light


Mobius Strip


Finding Your Tiger Face


How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated


rainbow line


Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Journey, and the modern Gay Hero-- a five part presentation on YouTube


rainbow line


About Alien Abduction


In honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke


Karellen was a homosexual


The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance


Intersections with the movie When We Rise


More about Gay Mental Health


Psych Tech Training


Toby at the California Institute


The Rainbow Flag


Ideas for gay mythic stories


rainbow line


People


Kip and Toby, Activists


Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.


Harry Hay, Founder of the gay movement


About Hay and The New Myth


About Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first man to really "come out"


About Michael Talbot, gay mystic


About Fr. Bernard Lynch


About Richard Baltzell


About Guy Mannheimer


About David Weyrauch


About Dennis Paddie


About Ask the Fire


About Arthur Evans


About Christopher Larkin


About Mark Thompson


About Sterling Houston


About Michael Stevens


The Alamo Business Council


Our friend Tom Nash


Second March on Washington


The Gay Spirituality Summit in May 2004 and the "Statement of Spirituality"


rainbow line

Book Reviews



Be Done on Earth by Howard E. Cook


Pay Me What I'm Worth by Souldancer


The Way Out by Christopher L  Nutter


The Gay Disciple by John Henson


Art That Dares by Kittredge Cherry


Coming Out, Coming Home by Kennth A. Burr


Extinguishing the Light by B. Alan Bourgeois


Over Coffee: A conversation For Gay Partnership & Conservative Faith by D.a. Thompson


Dark Knowledge by Kenneth Low


Janet Planet by Eleanor Lerman


The Kairos by Paul E. Hartman


Wrestling with Jesus by D.K.Maylor


Kali Rising by Rudolph Ballentine


The Missing Myth by Gilles Herrada


The Secret of the Second Coming by Howard E. Cook


The Scar Letters: A Novel by Richard Alther


The Future is Queer by Labonte & Schimel


Missing Mary by Charlene Spretnak


Gay Spirituality 101 by Joe Perez


Cut Hand: A Nineteeth Century Love Story on the American Frontier by Mark Wildyr


Radiomen by Eleanor Lerman


Nights at Rizzoli by Felice Picano


The Key to Unlocking the Closet Door by Chelsea Griffo


The Door of the Heart by Diana Finfrock Farrar


Occam’s Razor by David Duncan


Grace and Demion by Mel White


Gay Men and The New Way Forward by Raymond L. Rigoglioso


The Dimensional Stucture of Consciousness by Samuel Avery


The Manly Pursuit of Desire and Love by Perry Brass


Love Together: Longtime Male Couples on Healthy Intimacy and Communication by Tim Clausen


War Between Materialism and Spiritual by Jean-Michel Bitar


The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal


Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeffrey J. Kripal


The Invitation to Love by Darren Pierre


Brain, Consciousness, and God: A Lonerganian Integration by Daniel A Helminiak


A Walk with Four Spiritual Guides by Andrew Harvey


Can Christians Be Saved? by Stephenson & Rhodes


The Lost Secrets of the Ancient Mystery Schools by Stephenson & Rhodes


Keys to Spiritual Being: Energy Meditation and Synchronization Exercises by Adrian Ravarour


In Walt We Trust by John Marsh


Solomon's Tantric Song by Rollan McCleary


A Special Illumination by Rollan McCleary


Aelred's Sin by Lawrence Scott


Fruit Basket by Payam Ghassemlou


Internal Landscapes by John Ollom


Princes & Pumpkins by David Hatfield Sparks


Yes by Brad Boney


Blood of the Goddess by William Schindler


Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom by Jeffrey Kripal


Evolving Dharma by Jay Michaelson


Jesus in Salome's Lot by Brett W. Gillette


The Man Who Loved Birds by Fenton Johnson


The Vatican Murders by Lucien Gregoire


"Sex Camp" by Brian McNaught


Out & About with Brewer & Berg
Episode One: Searching for a New Mythology



The Soul Beneath the Skin by David Nimmons


Out on Holy Ground by Donald Boisvert


The Revotutionary Psychology of Gay-Centeredness by Mitch Walker


Out There by Perry Brass


The Crucifixion of Hyacinth by Geoff Puterbaugh


The Silence of Sodom by Mark D Jordan


It's Never About What It's About by Krandall Kraus and Paul Borja


ReCreations, edited by Catherine Lake


Gospel: A Novel by WIlton Barnhard


Keeping Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey by Fenton Johnson


Dating the Greek Gods
by Brad Gooch


Telling Truths in Church by Mark D. Jordan


The Substance of God by Perry Brass


The Tomcat Chronicles by Jack Nichols


10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives by Joe Kort


Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same Sex Love by Will Roscoe


The Third Appearance by Walter Starcke


The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann


Surviving and Thriving After a Life-Threatening Diagnosis by Bev Hall


Men, Homosexuality, and the Gods by Ronald Long

An Interview with Ron Long


Queering Creole Spiritual Traditons by Randy Conner & David Sparks

An Interview with Randy Conner


Pain, Sex and Time by Gerald Heard


Sex and the Sacred by Daniel Helminiak


Blessing Same-Sex Unions by Mark Jordan


Rising Up by Joe Perez


Soulfully Gay by Joe Perez


That Undeniable Longing by Mark Tedesco


Vintage: A Ghost Story by Steve Berman


Wisdom for the Soul by Larry Chang


MM4M a DVD by Bruce Grether


Double Cross by David Ranan


The Transcended Christian by Daniel Helminiak


Jesus in Love by Kittredge Cherry


In the Eye of the Storm by Gene Robinson


The Starry Dynamo by Sven Davisson


Life in Paradox by Fr Paul Murray


Spirituality for Our Global Community by Daniel Helminiak


Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society by Robert A. Minor


Coming Out: Irish Gay Experiences by Glen O'Brien


Queering Christ by Robert Goss


Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage


The Flesh of the Word by Richard A Rosato


Catland by David Garrett Izzo


Tantra for Gay Men by Bruce Anderson


Yoga & the Path of the Urban Mystic by Darren Main


Simple Grace by Malcolm Boyd


Seventy Times Seven by Salvatore Sapienza


What Does "Queer" Mean Anyway? by Chris Bartlett


Critique of Patriarchal Reasoning by Arthur Evans


Gift of the Soul by Dale Colclasure & David Jensen


Legend of the Raibow Warriors by Steven McFadden


The Liar's Prayer by Gregory Flood


Lovely are the Messengers by Daniel Plasman


The Human Core of Spirituality by Daniel Helminiak


3001: The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke


Religion and the Human Sciences by Daniel Helminiak


Only the Good Parts by Daniel Curzon


Four Short Reviews of Books with a Message


Life Interrupted by Michael Parise


Confessions of a Murdered Pope by Lucien Gregoire


The Stargazer's Embassy by Eleanor Lerman


Conscious Living, Conscious Aging by Ron Pevny


Footprints Through the Desert by Joshua Kauffman


True Religion by J.L. Weinberg


The Mediterranean Universe by John Newmeyer


Everything is God by Jay Michaelson


Reflection by Dennis Merritt


Everywhere Home by Fenton Johnson


Hard Lesson by James Gaston


God vs Gay? by Jay Michaelson


The Gate of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path by Jay Michaelson


Roxie & Fred by Richard Alther


Not the Son He Expected by Tim Clausen


The 9 Realities of Stardust by Bruce P. Grether


The Afterlife Revolution by Anne & Whitley Strieber


AIDS Shaman: Queer Spirit Awakening by Shokti Lovestar


Facing the Truth of Your Life by Merle Yost


The Super Natural by Whitley Strieber & Jeffrey J Kripal


Secret Body by Jeffrey J Kripal


In Hitler's House by Jonathan Lane


Walking on Glory by Edward Swift


The Paradox of Porn by Don Shewey


Is Heaven for Real? by Lucien Gregoire


Enigma by Lloyd Meeker


Scissors, Paper, Rock by Fenton Johnson




Toby Johnson's Books on Gay Men's Spiritualities:




Gay
Perspective cover
Gay Perspective

Things Our [Homo]sexuality
Tells Us about the
Nature of God and
the Universe


Gay Perspective audiobook
Gay Perspective is available as an audiobook narrated by Matthew Whitfield. Click here







Gay
Spirituality cover
Gay Spirituality

Gay Identity and 
the Transformation of
Human Consciousness



gay-spirituality-audiobook
Gay Spirituality   is now available as an audiobook, beautifully narrated by John Sipple. Click here








charmed lives
Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling

edited by
Toby Johnson
& Steve Berman







secret matter
Secret Matter

Lammy Award Winner for Gay Science Fiction

updated







Getting Life
Getting Life in Perspective

A Fantastical Romance





Getting
Life in Perspective audiobook
Getting Life in Perspective is available as an audiobook narrated by Alex Beckham. Click here 






The Fourth Quill

The Fourth Quill

originally published as PLAGUE




johnson-the-fourth-quill-audiobook
The Fourth Quill is available as an audiobook, narrated by Jimmie Moreland. Click here






Two
Two Spirits: A Story of Life with the Navajo

with Walter L. Williams




Two Spirits
audiobookTwo Spirits  is available as an audiobook  narrated by Arthur Raymond. Click here






Finding Your Own True Myth - The Myth of the Great Secret III
Finding Your Own True Myth:
What I Learned from Joseph Campbell

The Myth of the Great Secret III








In
Search of God in the Sexual Underworld
In Search of God  in the Sexual Underworld










The Myth of the Great Secret II

The Myth of the Great Secret: An Appreciation of Joseph Campbell.

This was the second edition of this book.




rainbow line



Toby Johnson's titles are available in other ebook formats from Smashwords.




San Francisco Days 1970-1981



In 1974-75, Toby Johnson took a course at Napa Community College in Napa, California for licensure as a Psychiatric Technician. The Psych Tech license is a license in California in nursing with a specialization in psychiatry.

In the 1960s, the Psych Tech training was the same as that for Licensed Vocational Nurses—L.V.N.—for the first three academic quarters, that is, the first school year. The second half year, LVNs study obstetrics and pediatrics, while LPTs focus specifically and exclusively on psychiatry and mental health hospitalization.

The Pysch Tech training at Napa Community College coordinated with the Napa State Hospital across the highway from the community college. Students did their practicum training at the State Hospital.

Johnson had learned about psych techs from Terry Carlson. In 1971, while he was studying at the California Institute of Asian Studies (C.I.A.S.)—now the California Institute of Integral Studies (C.I.I.S.)—which was then located at 21st and Dolores on the edge of San Francisco's Mission District and of the Castro, through Ken Dyer, whom he met through mutual friend Peter Roy, Toby befriended a sort of "hippie household" who lived up 21st St from the Institute in a wonderful five bedroom, three-storey house with a view looking out over Dolores Park. The head of the household was Tom Rhodes. Toby had met Dyer a few months before; he was invited for Christmas Dinner with that household in 1970. At that dinner or another soon after, he met Carlson who, recently out of the Navy where he'd worked in psychiatric services, was now working at Mount Zion Hospital's Crisis Clinic.

Having been interested in mental health services to the psychiatrically disabled—as a current day manifestation of what in Jesus's day were the lepers—since he'd worked as a "Hospital Chaplin Intern" while still a Servite seminarian, Johnson was fascinated by Terry's stories about the Crisis Clinic.

Also during those days Toby was friends with Rhonda Zobel, a young woman with wonderful flaming red hair, who worked as assistant to the Institute Librarian.

After completing his course work for a Master's Degree in Comparative Religions from CIAS, and realizing that degree offered no particular job opportunities—and was, in fact, working as a hippie carpenter and general factotum for his Tantra teacher at the Institute, Kim McKell, PhD—Johnson decided to pursue the psych tech training with the aim of getting a job at Mt. Zion in the same unit where Terry Carlson, L.P.T. worked.

Toby was dating Guy Mannheimer at that time. Guy had some interest in mental health (though mainly, so far, as a client) and both of them were looking for jobs. They'd spent the summer of ’72 together working at the Mann Ranch Seminars. At the end of the summer, Guy moved back to his home at Werder House in Menlo Park (2100 Santa Cruz Ave) next to Stanford University. (Previously the house had been home to members of the Grateful Dead—They called it The Chateau. It is credited with being one of the first "hippie-group-living-together" situations).

Toby got an apartment with his college friend Paul haight ashbury sign DePalma and a medical student named John Shapiro ON THE CORNER OF HAIGHT & ASHBURY. When Toby and Paul found an apartment at that location for rent they decided they had to live there, no matter what the state of the apartment! In fact it wasn't bad—though Toby's mother burst into tears when she walked into it at the very thought of her son living in such poverty. But the neighborhood had gone down hill from the days of the Summer of Love. And Toby, Paul and John only stayed there six months. (The turret behind the familiar street sign was in our apartment.) Major gay philosopher, political activist Arthur Evans ended up living in the apartment next door. It wasn't till Toby and Guy returned to S.F. in 1975 and got involved with Bay Area Gay Liberation (BAGL) that Toby met Arthur. (Read about Arthur Evans)

Here's that corner in 2013:

The flat was the top floor with the turret overlooking the corner. Toby's room was just beyond the bay window which was in the living room, to the left, on Haight, (above the banner with the red heart emblem). Paul had the turret room, John the room with two windows to the the right. The entrance was in the landing with the two arches to the right of the fireplug. Arthur's flat had the bay windows on the top floor directly above the first tree on Ashbury.


haight&ashbury-corner-2013.jpg


(Paul moved in with his girlfriend and Toby and John moved to a houseboat in Sausalito on Pier 11 1/2 to housesit for Dee Cameron; John got sick that summer and moved back to Boston and never really lived in the houseboat. Toby ended up sharing the boat with Dee's friend's sister, a wonderful woman, Freddie Cobey, the first "computer programmer" Toby'd ever met.)


Toby and Guy made the decision to join the psych tech training when it was discovered a friend of Toby's from Gay Rap and the San Francisco Gay Counseling Service, Peter Goldblum, had just gotten a job teaching psychology in the program at Napa College.

At first, Toby, Guy, and Leslie Peterson moved into a little house on Coombs St—#546 to be specific. We lived there a few months, then moved down the street.

our first house in Napa

We moved in with our friend Peter Goldblum who was forming a whole household—
in a neat old house on the southern edge of downtown Napa at 400 Coombs—that included Toby, Guy and Leslie, Spider O'Toole, Doug Fairchild, Peter Hall, along with several others — and Susie Dosen and her boyfriend. Susie had a wonderful big white cat named Buffalo who'd jump into your lap, climb up and put one paw on each of your shoulders and nuzzle your neck.

Coombs Street House

Tho' there were two front doors, we'd combined the two floors into a single house with seven bedrooms.

coombs from the side

In those days, there was a great fig tree that filled the side yard (shown in the lower photo).

The Psych Tech training was a wonderful—though sometimes emotionally wrenching—experience. The class consisted of about 35 students, most of us full-grown adults, though a few junior-college-aged young people—since the program was admininistered through Napa Community College and the classroom buildings were in an annex off the backside of Napa College. Among the teachers were Geneva Link, Patty Vale (a very stylish lady with a marvelous personality) and, of course, Peter Goldblum.

In 1975, Guy and Toby completed the training, got their licenses and moved back to San Francisco; they took an apartment on 18th St between Noe and Sanchez just down the street from the 18th and Castro gay nexus. Toby went by Mt Zion and, lo and behold, there was a job opening. He applied and got the job immediately. It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

(There's a story about the flat on 18th Street on the Castro Whistle Program at whistle.html.)

For three years, Toby worked at Mt. Zion in The Westside Crisis Clinic of Westside Mental Health. Among the other psych techs and crisis clinic staff were: Terry Carlson (who by that time was going by the single initial "T"), Oscar Peterson (who went by "O.P." —nurses, maybe especially male nurses, take on their initials as first name because it is how they sign medication orders they've administered), Richard Gibson, David Navarro, Christine Porter, Rudy Smith, MSW, Hilda Wedel, RN, Don Tusel, MD.

Toby stayed at that job while he went back to C.I.A.S. to complete the Master's and then go on to a PhD in "Counseling Psychology." His class, which included Art Rosengarten, Howard  Rossman, Barry Shea, Ann Sibary, was the "test class" for acceditation for the Institute. Toby Johnson, in fact, was the first PhD graduate in the Counseling Dept. The school changed its name the year they graduated. (The members of that class actually received two diplomas—one with the name as CIAS, the other CIIS.)


Johnson worked as an intern at The Tenderloin Clinic, a community mental health unit in downtown S.F. which had an official mandate to provide services to the City's gay and lesbian population. The Tenderloin Clinic's gay services actually evolved out of the peer couseling program Toby had helped Cliff Kraus establish a few years prior out of the Gay Rap program that met at a hippie community center called Alternative Futures on West Pine. (For a year or so, the counseling service operated out of the house Toby lived in on Arguello St at Clement in the Richmond District with a household that included Michael Ackerman and Dennis Conkin.) Cliff was very good at public relations and took the idea of gays-for-gays in counseling to the city's mental health providers. The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance developed from disgruntled lesbian social workers at the Clinic who felt we couldn't fulfill our gay/lesbian mandate because we were burdened with so many responsibilities for general psychatric patients in the downtown Tenderloin neighborhood (Ricki Boden, Phern Hunt, Carol Hastie, Mavis DeWees, JoAnn Lovejoy, David Greenberg, Karin Wandrei, etc.). DAFODIL inadvertently, I think, changed gay history, by getting the gays-for-gays model adopted as policy for the San Francisco Dept of Health and Black lesbian mother Pat Norman hired as director of gay/lesbian services.

This "Gay Clients' Bill of Rights" came to the fore a few years later when AIDS appeared and San Francisco was able to mount a response because there were gay clinicians and because there was no stigma for them to work with gay patients with a "gay disease," the way there was in other parts of the country.

While Toby was working there, first as an intern and then as paid staff, the Clinic moved from the Golden Gate YMCA Bldg to Hyde Street and Jerry Polon became Director of the Clinic.


Also at the California Institute in those days were Elizabeth Kent and Melinda Guyol—who went on to create Southern Dharma Foundation in Hot Springs, NC out of conversations a group of (mostly non-gay) students at the Institute conducted in monthly dinner parties about how we could take our comparative religions training into our professions as mental health workers.

Toby Johnson left San Francisco in 1981 and spent that summer with Elizabeth and Melinda in North Carolina helping to clear the land for the meditation hall at Southern Dharma. (Among their North Carolina friends with Alan Troxler and Carl Whitman.) Johnson wrote his second book IN SEARCH OF GOD IN THE SEXUAL UNDERWORLD that summer, reporting on the very eventful experience he'd had the previous couple of years working with Toby Marotta and URSA on the Hustler Study.




Follow-up:
This webpage was patently intended to attract the attention of Toby Johnson's old friends from 1970s California. That is why so many people are mentioned by name; when they go googling themselves (as we all should do regularly—for all sorts of reasons), they'll find this page.

In summer of 2008, the net tossed out by the mention of the Psych Tech training at Napa introduced Toby to Renee Romanoff who'd been in a class a couple of years ahead of his; she'd later worked at the hospital and became friends with Susie Dosen when they worked on the same ward. Renee's email is renee22754@gmail.com


rainbow line

Toby Johnson, PhD is author of nine books: three non-fiction books that apply the wisdom of his teacher and "wise old man," Joseph Campbell to modern-day social and religious problems, four gay genre novels that dramatize spiritual issues at the heart of gay identity, and two books on gay men's spiritualities and the mystical experience of homosexuality and editor of a collection of "myths" of gay men's consciousness. 

Johnson's book GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness won a Lambda Literary Award in 2000.

His  GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our [Homo]sexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe was nominated for a Lammy in 2003. They remain in print.

FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE MYTH: What I Learned from Joseph Campbell: The Myth of the Great Secret III tells the story of Johnson's learning the real nature of religion and myth and discovering the spiritual qualities of gay male consciousness.

 back to top


BACK to Toby's home page


valid html

Visitors
Essential SSL